Faculty Member Produces Events for Major Names in Fashion

11/11/2011

Marilu Menendez, an adjunct faculty member in LIM College’s Marketing and Arts & Communications Departments, recently worked on several high-profile projects with some of the leading creative minds in the fashion world.

In August, she produced and promoted a major exhibition of the work of Ruven Afanador at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota, Colombia. Afanador is an internationally renowned fashion photographer who lives and works in New York. His fashion editorials and celebrity portraits have appeared in many of the world’s leading publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, InStyle, Paris Photo, Rolling Stone, and Elle, as well as in the French, German, Spanish, Australian, and Japanese editions of Vogue.

The exhibition, titled “Yo Sere tu Espejo…Ruven Afanador: 80 Retratos” (“I Will Be Your Mirror…Ruven Afanador: 80 Portraits”) broke records for both attendance and press coverage. It featured a retrospective of Afanador’s work as a portraitist, including photos of Catherine Deneuve, Antonio Banderas, Courtney Love, Quentin Tarantino, Oprah Winfrey and Tina Fey, alongside of images from Afanador’s three books and of Colombia luminaries such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ingrid Betancourt.

In the fall, Menendez produced and promoted a museum exhibition on the unique collaboration between celebrated fashion designer Isabel Toledo and her artist husband Ruben Toledo. That exhibit, at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, was titled “Una Historia de Amor entre el Arte y la Moda” (“A Love Story between Art and Fashion”).

Menendez then coordinated the production of Isabel Toledo’s show of her Spring-Summer 2012 Collection, which opened Puerto Rico and Miami’s Fashion Weeks, respectively. Menendez also produced a Toledo’s show for Miami Fashion Week. These were significant events, as Toledo had not shown her collection in more than a decade.